Ethiopia, Eritrea must deflate frontier tensions – UN
Dec 12, 2005 (ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopia and Eritrea must take “concrete actions” to deflate tensions along their shared frontier, a top U.N official said Monday.
Commitments to peace by the leaders of both countries aren’t enough, as a miscalculation could lead to further bloodshed, said Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno, speaking in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa after meeting Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Concerns were mounting that fighting could again erupt between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which fought a 1998-2000 war that claimed tens of thousands of lives and cost both countries – two of the world’s poorest – an estimated $1 million a day. In recent months, both countries have been massing troops near the border and Eritrea has been restricting the work of U.N. peacekeepers.
“Nobody should be complacent in the present situation,” Guehenno said. “There’s always a risk of war by miscalculation,” he said on the fifth anniversary of the peace deal. Guehenno is on a three-day mission to the region to try to defuse tensions.
“I think both countries have stressed they don’t want to go to war. That isn’t quite good enough. There are concrete actions that need to be taken,” Guehenno said.
“We’ve seen in the past five years minor incidents can escalate because of the mistrust, because of misperceptions and sometimes because of the command and control issues at the very local level,” Guehenno said.
Saturday, Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin said it would pull back troops in compliance with a U.N order. As of Monday, there was no confirmation the pullback had begun.
“We appreciate the decision of Ethiopia to pull away its troops from the front line,” Guehenno added before he flew, with U.N. military adviser General Randir Kumar Mehta, to Eritrea for talks with President Isayas Afeworki.
The U.N estimates that since December, Ethiopia has moved around eight divisions – some 50,000 men – and tanks, missiles and other military hardware to the border.
Diplomats estimate around 380,000 troops are entrenched along the 1,000 kilometer frontier – around 130,000 on the Ethiopian side and 250,000 on the Eritrean side.
Last week, Eritrea ordered the expulsion of nearly 200 U.S. and European peacekeepers, a move the U.N force said could cripple its capabilities. The U.N.’s nearly 3,300-strong peacekeeping force is composed of peacekeepers and military observers from some 40 countries. The largest contingent, more than 1,500 troops, is from India.
Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war. Since the 1998-2000 war, U.N. troops have patrolled a buffer zone between the two countries.
(AP/ST)